


Good Intentions

by propheticfire



Series: Alternate Lives of Dogma [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Drug Addiction, Exploitation, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Other, Prostitution, alternate lives of Dogma, fuckin'...capitalism, good intentions gone awry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2018-11-30 07:23:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11458806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propheticfire/pseuds/propheticfire
Summary: While undercover on a mission, ARC trooper Fives runs into someone he never wanted to meet again, and realizes just how quickly priorities can change.An Alternate Lives of Dogma story.





	1. Discovery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seraf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/gifts).



Fives blinked as he ducked inside the doorway, willing his eyes to adjust from the blinding suns to the nebulous darkness of the interior. He had tailed his target through the marketplace to this back alley door. A faded, red-painted S on the stone above the door marked this place for what it was: a spice den. A cesspool of slum and vice and desperation. A haven of exploitation and greed. The perfect place for Separatist scum like his target to lie low, to disappear.

Fives tried to steady his breath as the pungent clouds of tabac and marcan herb and unkempt life enveloped him. The air was thick, heavy, with a sour edge. Soft music played, something with too many shimmering notes. As his eyes continued to adjust to the dim lighting, slowly pulsing through colors, he made his way carefully further in. To his left, a counter, where patrons slapped down credits to claim bright vials of death sticks, mixing them into cocktails while bloodshot eyes watched the holoscreens above. To his right, cushions and small tables, draped with bodies in various states of undress and undernourishment, sucking on shisha pipes or quietly giggling with unfocused expressions. Fives turned away from a dark corner where a shirtless man lay facedown on a couch, his spine and ribs so prominent Fives could count each bone. A sense of despair clung to his skin.

“Why hello there lad!” a voice called from the counter. Several pairs of eyes turned toward him. Most quickly went back to the holoscreens. A few lingered, haunted, hungry. Inwardly, Fives grimaced. In his civilian clothing, he felt dangerously exposed, though on this backwater planet his ARC armor would have marked him for trouble far more readily. Disguise operations were not something he considered himself particularly adept at. But any skill only came with practice. Advanced recon. Complete the mission. Adapt and overcome.

Fives pulled his hat down a little tighter and turned his head.

The owner of the voice, a squat-looking human man, beamed at him over a display of death sticks. “Fancy you’re new here,” he said, in a tone that dripped with barely-concealed avarice. “Lookin’ for a little excitement? You name your poison, I’ve got it. Glitterstim? Slick? Or maybe you’re wantin’ to try somethin’ a little more high-class?” The man’s voice dropped conspiratorially. “I’m the only dealer this side of Tatooine that can get you some Neutron Pixie. How wild a night you lookin’ to have, lad?” He winked.

Fives edged closer to the counter. The man’s voice, however intimate his tone seemed, carried. The less attention Fives could draw to himself the better. Though his target didn’t appear to be anywhere nearby.

Fives leaned as casually as he could on the counter, keeping his eyes on the room. “Could use a boost, maybe,” he said. “What do you suggest?”

The man’s eyes gleamed and he turned away, rummaging through some drawers against the wall. When he returned to the counter, he placed several small, brightly colored packages in a neat line in front of Fives.

Fives glanced at the packages periodically as the man pointed to them, describing the properties in them that would no doubt give him the most exquisite trip of his life, but his attention remained on the room. Toward the back, near the shirtless man, he could make out a small alcove hidden by a curtain. A droid stood silently beside it. As he watched, two people stumbled out of the curtain, revealing a set of stairs ascending behind them before the curtain fluttered back into place. One of the people stopped by the droid and handed it a small key card, while the other tucked his shirt into his pants. After a few exchanged words, the second person gave a sloppy grin and shuffled toward the front door, still adjusting his clothing. The first person meandered over to the cushions and perched, poised, as though aware of being on display.

“Lad, if you’re not buyin’, don’t waste my time. I got other people to take care of.”

Fives turned his head back to the man behind the counter, suddenly aware that he’d missed everything the man had said. The small packages were quickly being swept off the counter, and the man’s previously eager attitude had turned aloof. “I don’t like window shoppers,” the man continued. “If you’re not lookin’ for somethin’, you can take yourself elsewhere.”

Fives’ eyes drew back to the alcove behind the curtain. It was entirely likely his target had accessed the level above this one, and there was no way he was going to let his target slip away. Improvise. Adapt and overcome. A little truth couldn’t hurt, could it?

“Actually,” Fives said, lowering his voice, “I am looking. For some _one_.”

The man’s eyes lit up once again with their trademark gleam, and a sly smile spread across his face. “Well now lad, that’s more like it. Well now. I do have some…guest rooms, upstairs, if you need. By the half hour, of course. Will you be needin’ a selection to choose from?”

The man’s voice grew louder with his last sentence, almost imperceptibly. But Fives felt a shift in the room. Over on the cushions, a few people sat up straighter, smoothed wrinkles out of their clothing, turned their heads slightly toward the counter with expressions of passive pleasantry.

“Noticed that, did ya?” the man purred. “You’re sharper than I thought. So, what takes your fancy? See somethin’ you like?”

Fives scanned the crowd. Most looked like they wouldn’t be much trouble. He could likely stun one easily enough and then be free to search the upper level for his target. His eyes searched one person, then the next. Who would be the least conspicuous? He glanced at the alcove once again. Right up those stairs. The next part of his mission was so close. But if he didn’t act soon, he could lose the tail on his target.

Fives dragged his eyes back to the room. But something nagged at him. Something he’d missed. He looked again, deliberately, toward the alcove. There in the corner, in the darkness. The shirtless man had also lifted his head, propped himself up on a shaking elbow. No more than skin and bone, he still tried to put himself on display. Fives’ eyes moved from the man’s reedy arm up to his hollow chest, up to days’ worth of facial hair untrimmed, up to thin strings of hair that draped listlessly over his eyes. Some sort of scarring covered the man’s face, down one side and up the other in a sort of chevron shape. No, wait. Not scarring. A tattoo. Hidden by the hair that hung over it, but plain now the longer Fives looked at it. A geometric tattoo, made up of smaller shapes.

The shapes in his nightmares.

Fives gasped.

The man behind the counter chuckled. “I see you're a lad for the lads,” he said. “Got a good eye for the pretty ones. Boy’s a real softie. Do anything you tell him to.”

Fives grunted as the man pulled out a datapad and tapped away on the screen. He couldn’t tear his eyes away. This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be happening. He was seeing ghosts.

“How long you gonna be wantin’?” the man asked, looking up from his datapad expectantly.

Fives fished in his pocked and pulled out a handful of local coin. “How much will this get me?”

The man looked over the coin with a practiced eye. “Couple hours.” He smiled again, a wicked, knowing smile. “Takin’ it slow today. You’ll have a nice easy time with that one.” With a deft motion, he slid the coin out of Fives’ hand and deposited it below the counter. After a few more taps on his datapad, the man cleared his throat and nodded toward the alcove. “All right, you’re all checked in. Just go give the kid a nudge on the shoulder. He’ll know what to do.”

Fives nodded absently. His feet were already carrying him to the corner. As he approached, the shirtless man staggered to his feet. He reached out and grasped Fives’ elbow, feebly attempting to guide him. The pressure on Fives’ arm betrayed the truth behind the simple gesture. The man was using Fives to keep his balance. Fives took a steadying breath. This wasn’t right.

They walked to the base of the stairs, and the man paused by the droid to punch a code into the keypad on the droid’s chest. A small key card came out of a slot next to the keypad, which the droid promptly removed and handed to the man. The droid then reached over and pulled the curtain aside.

The shirtless man led Fives up the stairs and down a short hall, then around a corner to another hall. About midway down the hall, they stopped, and the man slid his key card into a slot next to a shabby-looking wooden door. A locking mechanism clicked, and the door swung open. Fives was shepherded inside. Pale streaks of light shone through the slats in the mangled blinds which hung over the only window, barely illuminating the tiny space. A small bed tucked up against one wall, and a chair and rickety end table squeezed into the corner opposite. Dust floated in thick particles between the streaks of light.

The shirtless man closed the door softly, then turned toward Fives. Even in the dim light, Fives could see the way the man’s tattoo sunk into the hollows of his face. He stood, guarded, as the man approached him. Was this all just some elaborate game? Was this actually happening? How had this happened? Fives waited for the man’s next move. _Just like in the nightmares._ Next he’d be asked if he wanted to be blindfolded.

When the man sank to his knees in front of Fives and wordlessly put his hands on Fives’ hips, something snapped. “ _No_ ,” Fives said. He grabbed the man’s hands and lifted them off. “No.” Briefly he thought he might get more resistance, but the man simply let his arms go slack in Fives’ grip. Fives leaned down and hooked his arms under the man’s shoulders. “Come on,” he said. “Get up. Up you go. That’s it.” He lifted the man––so easy, so light––and walked him toward the bed, where he gently set the man down. The man sat, perched on the edge of the bed, eyes downcast.

It suddenly occurred to Fives that the man had never once looked up at him.

Fives knelt in front of the man, gazing into his face. The man’s eyes were vacant, distant. They slid away every time Fives came close to looking into them. “Hey,” Fives said softly, “hey, you’re okay. Buddy you’re okay.”He reached up to brush some of the strings of hair out of the man’s face. Gently, he cupped the man’s cheek in his hand. “Look at me,” Fives pleaded. “Please look at me.”

Fives felt the man shudder ever so slightly. He watched the man’s ribs expand as he took a deep breath. But he refused to meet Fives’ gaze.

“You’re okay,” Fives said again. “You’re safe, I’m here, I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you little brother.” He brushed his thumb across one of the designs in the man’s chevron-shaped tattoo.

“Dogma, what the hell happened?”


	2. Reacquaintance

“Dogma, what the hell happened?”

At the sound of his name, Dogma’s eyes snapped wide open. He met Fives’ gaze briefly before his eyes darted away, twitching. Just enough time for Fives to see the dark stain of broken blood vessels in the corners, the irises that were all but gone as the blackness of the pupils swallowed them.

“Dogma,” Fives tried again. “Dogma look at me. Please. It’s me. It’s Fives. You know me.” With his free hand, he reached up and removed his hat, tilting his head to show the 5 tattoo on his temple. “It’s me, it’s _Fives_ , Dogma look at me.”

Dogma’s eyes flicked over the tattoo. He took in a breath––sharp. Then another. And another. His body began to shake. A low moan came from his throat, in a voice that sounded like it hadn’t been used in a long time. Scratchy, broken. “ _Noooooo…_ ”

Fives reached up with his free hand to cup Dogma’s other cheek. “Dogma, it’s me, it _is_ me, it’s your brother. It’s Fives.” Gently, he tried turning Dogma’s head toward him.

“NO!” Dogma suddenly yelled. He jerked his head out of Fives’ grasp, launched off the bed. His legs gave out and he crashed to the ground. Reflexively, Fives reached for him. But Dogma shrank away, pulling himself across the floor with desperately flailing arms. “No,” he kept saying, “No no no no.” He reached the end table and tried to pull himself up. The wood groaned, and then with a _crack!_ it gave way, tumbling down on top of Dogma as he fell back to the floor.

“Hey, whoa! Easy!” Fives darted forward. He grasped the broken end table and lifted it off of Dogma, tossing it aside. He reached for Dogma’s shoulder. Dogma flinched at the contact, his breath coming in quicker and quicker gasps. He tried again to crawl away. “ _No no no no.”_ The words stuck in his throat and turned to a shuddering cough. And still he batted Fives’ hands away.

“Please, buddy, stop moving,” Fives said, trying once more to reach for Dogma. “You’re gonna hurt yourself, please stop.” But Dogma jerked away again. His hand slammed into the leg of the chair, and he cried out weakly.

“Dogma, _stop._ ” 

Fives captured Dogma’s wrists and pulled them behind his back. With one hand he held them there, while the other hand pressed against Dogma’s shoulders, pinning him facedown against the floor. “Easy, easy,” Fives said again softly. Dogma squirmed under the hold, but Fives’ grip was solid. “Breathe, little brother. Just breathe.”

Slowly, Dogma’s gasps gave way to soft pants. Fives knelt over him, keeping steady pressure on his hold. He could feel the small tremors in Dogma’s body every time he took a breath. The bones of Dogma’s spine pressed up against Fives’ hand.

This couldn’t be real. This wasn’t Dogma. Fives closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing his heart to beat as steady as he pretended to be. This man––this _waif_ ––beneath his hands couldn’t possibly be the trooper he’d served with only months ago. This shaking, ragged body couldn’t possibly belong to the man who had marched for twelve hours over hostile terrain, who had ducked and run and held the line against ambush after ambush, who had stood as rigid as a flagpole beside a firing squad. The wrists that Fives held pinned with one hand, so frail he thought they might break with more pressure, couldn’t possibly have once supported hands that had pulled his own blaster from his belt and shot a traitor dead.

And yet, Fives knew. A cold heaviness settled in his chest with absolute certainty. This was no dream, no trick. This _was_ Dogma.

And he was going to have to face that.

Fives opened his eyes. Dogma had gone still beneath his hands. Sweat shone in a dull sheen on his bare back and plastered limp strands of his hair against his forehead. The pale streaks of light from the window washed out the color of Dogma’s already ashen skin, accentuating the deep shadows cast by the prominence of his ribs. If it weren’t for his breathing, shallow but even, Fives could have been convinced he was holding a corpse.

“Dogma, buddy,” Fives tried again. “Dogma can you hear me?”

Dogma gave a small nod of his head.

“And you can understand me?” Fives continued.

Another small nod.

Fives stroked his thumb along Dogma’s clammy skin, in what he hoped was a soothing gesture. “If I let you go, will you promise not to fight me? I just want to talk.”

Dogma took in a deep breath. Fives could feel his frame shudder beneath his hands. Then, weakly, he spoke. “Okay.”

Fives slowly eased up the pressure on Dogma’s shoulders, slowly released his hold on Dogma’s wrists. With careful movements, he got to his feet and stepped back.

Dogma brought his hands forward, underneath his chest. He tried pushing himself off the ground. His arms began to shake, and he collapsed to the floor once more.

Fives started forward, but caught himself. “Do you want a hand?” he asked cautiously.

Dogma didn’t answer. Tried again, fell again. Fives clenched his fists in agitation. This wasn’t right. No trooper should have to need help just to get off the floor. What had happened?

Dogma lay there for a moment, panting again. Then he reached downward, into the pocket of his threadbare pants, and pulled out a brightly colored death stick vial. He brought it to his face.

“Dogma, no!” Fives said. He started forward again, but Dogma had already broken the seal and poured the liquid into his mouth. His face contorted in a grimace, eyes squeezed so tightly shut that the skin around them went white. After a few seconds, Dogma gave a violent shudder and coughed. But he put his hands back on the floor and determinedly pushed himself up.

After a few pauses, Dogma managed to get his feet under him and stagger to the bed. Once seated, trying to catch his breath, he looked at the empty vial in his hand. His fingers curled around it. Uncurled. Curled again. Suddenly he threw it against the opposite wall. It shattered. Dogma gave a barking laugh, which dissolved into coughing, and he folded his arms around his torso as he doubled over.

Fives gingerly stepped over the shards of glass and approached the bed. He perched next to Dogma. “Why are you…” he started to say, but paused. Why are you what? Why are you taking death sticks? Why are you starving? Why are you prostituting yourself? Why are you here?

Why are you not on Kamino?

Why are you not dead?

Dogma laughed again, a sharp sound, devoid of humor. “Gotta take the edge off,” he said. He waved his hand vaguely at the glimmer of broken glass on the floor.

“What are you doing, Dogma?” Fives asked. “You’re really gonna get high right now?” Inwardly, he grimaced. He hadn’t meant to sound so disgusted. So judgmental.

Dogma shook his head. “Not high,” he said, his voice thin and scratchy. “Not enough for that. Just…normal. Barely.” He glanced at Fives. “Trust me, it’s better this way.”

Fives’ eyebrows knitted together. “Better?”

Dogma nodded. “Without it, it’s all…colors, and loud, and everything hurts, and I can’t…I can’t…think…”

Fives reached up to put a hand on Dogma’s shoulder. Dogma flinched away.

“Don’t touch me. Please. Please don’t…”

Fives withdrew his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Just not…just not the shoulder.”

They lapsed into silence. Fives picked absently at a string on the sleeve of his jacket. The air up here was less heady, less cloying with mingled smokes and perfumes, but it stifled. The sourness was more prevalent. The stagnancy felt at once too present and not present at all, a history of meaningless encounters pressed into the atmosphere. What kind of things had these faded walls seen? How many lives ended here? How many lives _started_ here? How many drinks had that broken end table held?

The bed beneath Fives began to quiver, pulling him out of his thoughts. He looked over to Dogma. Dogma was shivering. His arms were wrapped tightly around his bare torso, his expression unfocused. Unfocused, but not without presence. Fives could see the slight knit of Dogma’s eyebrows, the slight clench of his jaw. He heard the light stutter of Dogma’s breath, as though he fought to keep it even.

Fives shifted on the bed, and Dogma flinched. His eyes flicked to Fives. The corner of his mouth quirked, as though he were about to say something, but he just looked away again. Hell, what had happened to this kid?

Slowly, Fives eased his arms out of his jacket sleeves. He held out the jacket and scooted closer. “Easy buddy,” he said. “You look like you could use this.” Gently, he draped the jacket over Dogma’s shoulders.

“I’m not your buddy,” Dogma snapped. But he grasped the jacket with shaking hands and pulled it around him.

Fives’ hands hovered over Dogma’s shoulders for a moment, before he pulled them back and scooted a more comfortable distance away. The whole situation itched with a sense of _wrongness_ that Fives couldn’t shake. His jacket dwarfed Dogma’s frame. Even without the extra conditioning and build of an ARC, the jacket shouldn’t have fit Dogma that much differently. He looked like a gangly six-year-old cadet. Maybe that was why Fives felt so much like he needed to keep Dogma close. Little brother, he kept thinking, little brother. And yet, the grizzled facial hair, and the unkempt mess on his head, and the eyes that held no shine.

Dogma’s shivering finally stopped, and Fives watched as he eased further back onto the bed, resting his head against the wall. His eyelids dropped shut. For a few long moments, there was silence. Fives was beginning to think Dogma had drifted off to sleep. But then he opened his mouth.

“I’ve had this nightmare before.”

Fives’ stomach did a flip. Nightmare. He knew about nightmares. Knew about after Umbara, when he’d woken in a cold sweat, the sound of blaster fire in his ears and the silhouette of armed troopers swimming before his eyes. Night after night, with the shape of that chevron tattoo burned into his mind, chasing him, haunting him. The shape that he never thought he’d see again. The shape that sat, tauntingly visible, on the face before him.

“Nightmare?” was all he said.

“The one where you come back,” Dogma continued, eyes still closed. “The one where you find me. The one where you never get past what I did to you. Where you decide you can’t stand to let old age take me, so you come to do it yourself.” He laughed––a single, harsh sound. “You don’t have to wait much longer.” He waved a hand vaguely toward the floor, where the shattered death stick vial still lay. “These things take years off a normal person’s life. With our lifespan? It can’t be long now.”

Fives felt himself go numb. Had he been angry? Yes. Had it been difficult? Yes. But to hunt down a brother in cold blood? Even after what Dogma had done, seeing him packed off into that transport bound for Kamino, seeing the resigned look on his face… That was the last time he had seen Dogma. He’d been there for the court-martial, given testimony. Heard Rex speak on Dogma’s behalf. Put his arm around Tup’s shoulders when Tup learned that his friend had been sentenced to reconditioning. Watched them march Dogma up the ramp of the ship, hands restrained, stripped of his armor. And he hadn’t once thought that there needed to be any other ending. Dogma was getting what he deserved. On Kamino.

“You were supposed to go to Kamino.” His voice came out flat.

Dogma’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. “I did.”

“Then _what happened?”_


	3. Homecoming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking so long to bring this update. I hope you enjoy it, and you bear with this story as it continues to unfold.

_Kamino  
_ _Nine months previous…_

He didn’t need the gunship to stop bucking back and forth to know that they’d broken through the turbulence of Kamino’s stormy atmosphere. He felt it in his chest. A deep, heavy drag, that had been hanging about him since the trial, and now pulled at his heart even more than the inertia from the gunship’s deceleration. The icy sense of inevitability weighted his limbs down far more than his armor ever had. They could have removed his binders and it would have made no difference; he didn’t have the strength to move anyway. What was done was done. What was to come, still to come. And the vast bleakness of destiny pressed ever closer around him.

Homecoming. Was it really a homecoming? Kamino was a home only in that he’d spent the first nine years of his life there. He’d never been meant to return to it. No field trooper was. Kamino security was its own faction; if you graduated for the battlefield, you didn’t come back.

Unless you were defective.

He already knew he was sentenced to reconditioning. He had no illusions about what that meant. Others might have hung on to the belief that it really was a form of retraining, but he knew it was just a fancy word for termination. Why waste time reprogramming a product that had already failed them once, when they had hundreds more just waiting to take his place? Fitting, really, after what he’d done to his own brothers. Knowingly. Willingly. Without having to be tricked. Putting them up against a firing squad of his own choosing. Did he want to die? Not really. But he understood why it had to happen.

The gunship touched down and he was marched onto the platform. It was raining. Of course it was raining. But for once, he didn’t mind the rain. It splashed cooly against his face.

Reminding him he was alive.

For now.

He passed into the sterile white halls of Tipoca City, and left the rain behind forever.

They took him deeper into the city, winding through bright, featureless corridors. He felt a twinge in his chest. Nostalgia. The faint antiseptic smell brought back memories of routine growth checks and physicals. The muted thud of footsteps reminded him of the daily formation drills. It was…comforting. In a way that sickened him, to be so comforted by this manufactured sort of existence. His cheeks burned, and he swallowed down the shame of it, hoping no one would notice.

They rounded a corner, and someone did notice. Notice him, anyway. “Dogma!” came the softly accented cry, and the speaker hurried over, stopping just short of him. El-Les. His old trainer. Bringing another wave of shameful nostalgia.

El-Les held his hands out, as if to grasp him in greeting, but his eyes flicked between Dogma’s binders and the guards to either side. “You’ve come back,” he said simply. Dogma could only nod, head down. He didn’t have the courage to look El-Les in the eyes.

“It is not a happy homecoming, I see,” El-Les continued. He frowned slightly. “What has brought you back?”

“Killed a Jedi,” one of the guards blurted out with a sneer. “We’re taking him for reconditioning.”

El-Les’ eyes widened. “Is this true?”

Dogma nodded again.

“Why did you do this?” El-Les pressed. His voice lacked the biting, accusatory tone with which that question had been thrown at Dogma in recent days. Rather, he seemed genuinely curious.

“I-I had to,” Dogma finally said. “He betrayed us.” The only words he could say. The only words he’d _been_ able to say, since…

El-Les nodded. “And for this, you are to be reconditioned.”

“And not a moment too soon,” the other guard broke in. “Can’t have Jedi killers in the GAR, can we?”

Despite himself, Dogma bristled. Jedi killer. It’s what he was. But the term still cut him. Especially from one of his brothers. He’d tried, hadn’t he? He’d tried to follow the rules, to be a good soldier. He’d done everything right, and it had turned out wrong. And then he’d tried to right that wrong, and it was still wrong. And he felt his brothers’ coldness more than ever.

El-Les finally laid a hand on Dogma’s arm. “Let me take him the rest of the way,” he said to the guards. “I’d like to hear what happened.”

The one who’d called Dogma a Jedi killer cleared his throat and stood a little taller. “No offense, sir, but this prisoner is considered extremely dangerous. I doubt you’d be able to manage on your own.”

El-Les “hmph”ed, thoughtful. Then, faster than anyone expected, he surged forward and wrestled the guard into a choke hold, pulling him away from Dogma and trapping his arms. “You forget,” he said, his soft voice laced with a hint of steel, _“I_ trained him. And I trained _you_ , too.” He held the guard there a moment, then released him pointedly. “This Kamino assignment has made you soft; perhaps it is you who needs to be taken to reconditioning?”

The guard scrambled to stand at attention. “Yes sir, sorry sir!”

El-Les returned to Dogma’s side and placed his hand on him once more. The other guard backed away, to stand at attention as well.

“You’re dismissed, troopers,” El-Les said.

Dogma heard their footsteps retreat down the hallway. A strange, sinking feeling settled in his stomach. However they’d treated him, they were still his brothers. And now he was alone. Alone to face his fate. Would any of them be present for it? Or would it just be El-Les and the Kaminoans?

“Dogma,” came El-Les’ voice, gentle once again. “You got a tattoo.” He came closer, peering at Dogma’s face. “It suits you.”

Despite himself––despite everything––Dogma felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward.

“Come,” El-Les continued. “We will go to my quarters. Much has happened, and I want to hear about it.” He pressed at Dogma’s arm, coaxing him forward. Slowly, uncertainly, Dogma obliged. Was this allowed? Would it even matter whether or not it was allowed? He followed his trainer down the hall, and tried not to think about how he’d rather just get it over with.

Several hours later, after his binders were removed, and after many cups of hot sweet-herb tea, the story was out. Umbara. General Krell. Betrayal. Mutiny. Treason. The nightmares that wouldn’t stop. Dogma felt empty when he had finished. Drained. But somehow also purged, as though the telling of the horrors had made their burden less. El-Les had sat quietly through the telling, asking only simple questions here and there. Now, he stared off into nothing, presumably processing all of Dogma’s words. Dogma took another sip of his tea and felt the warmth run through him. He’d never tasted anything quite like it before. Part of him was glad for the experience. Part of him reminded him that soon it wouldn’t matter.

After a time, El-Les took a deep breath “We trained you to be obedient,” he said, almost to himself. “Perhaps we trained you too well…” He shifted, to gaze at Dogma across the table. Dogma tried to meet it.

“I don’t want to call your actions a failure,” El-Les continued, “but they do reflect on me as your trainer.”

Dogma felt the familiar flush of shame rush into his face. He dropped his eyes back to his cup of tea. Of course, he’d let his trainer down too. What else was he expecting?

“No no no,” El-Les said, noticing his reaction. “I mean only that I feel responsible for this result.” He paused again. When he spoke once more, his voice had an air of conviction. “And I must try to make amends for it.”

He rose from the table and vanished into a closet, returning with a sturdy jacket and utility belt. He handed them to Dogma and ushered him up and out the door. “I am not a fool, nor am I blind. I know what ‘reconditioning’ means. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?” Dogma asked.

El-Les keyed the lock code on the door. 

“Away.”


End file.
